A year later, Hilltop remembers shooting victim while police still seek suspect

Neighbors, business owners and family members gathered Thursday afternoon outside the Broken Spoke in Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood to remember Steven Speakman, a neighbor who was shot and killed a year ago.

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Speakman was found by a neighbor at 6:15 a.m. Nov. 3, 2015, in front of a business in the 1000 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Way, about two blocks from where he lived.

“The Stevie I knew, I would walk out of my apartment door look up and he would be waving at me, and Steven smiled all the time. He loved everybody, he loved helping people,” Atchley said. “Steven was definitely one we loved.”

Following Speakman’s death, family and friends — many of them local business owners — said they couldn’t understand why someone would shoot the 26-year-old who had the intellectual capacity of a 10-year-old.

“I don’t know anybody that didn’t like him. If you met Steven, you liked him,” Kenton Dale, owner of Hilltop Loans on South 11th Street, said following his death.

Dale knew Speakman nearly his entire life.

Speakman regularly walked around the neighborhood and offered to help local businesses by vacuuming or running errands for employees. He also would stop in to talk.

He was known for his hugs and kind heart, according to friends and family.